There were two semi-related bits of news yesterday that have the potential to give WordPress-powered blogs even more of an edge in Google search rankings. Two small changes that are going to change how we find and use information, and it all comes down to one word: PubSubHubbub (PuSH).

First we got word that all 10.5 million WordPress.com blogs would support not only RSSCloud but also PuSH. That’s a lot of blog content there. Enough to make a serious difference on its own. At the same time Automattic released the PuSHPress plugin to do the same for self-hosted WP blogs (which I promptly downloaded and activated, just like I did for RSSCloud). Sure alone this is major news (hence why RWW and others covered it—10.5 Million Wordpress Blogs Get PubSubHubbub), now WP.com blogs and those who install the plugin will now push their updates out to readers instead of forcing readers to come to them. Ah the real-time web, it’s getting richer and richer. So, while that is cool, it is trumped by the next bit of news…

Google is going to use PuSH to power real-time indexing and results—Google Index to Go Real Time. See the connection? Out of the box WP.com blogs are going to have a serious edge over most other blogs (I’m sure Blogger blogs will get PuSH soon too). A tight blogging network that stomps out spam blogs without mercy, that encourages great content, and now well tell Google immediately when there is new stuff? I think that’s a pretty powerful thing. Now, add to the mix all the self-hosted WP blogs? Man that has the potential to really influence Google results.

This doesn’t mean that people can be lazy with SEO, on the contrary, I think this should push people to take it more seriously. Look, you’re going to get your content right into the Google index, so making sure you use (good) categories, tags, and writing with keywords in mind only serves to push you higher in the results.

With tens (hundreds?) of millions of blogs pushing updates to Google, don’t you think that those results are going to get priority?

Granted, it shouldn’t take long before Blogger, MovableType, and TypePad have PuSH support as well, but let’s consider volume here. WordPress is poised to become the platform of choice for Google.

WordPress, powering the realtime web, with help from Google.

Very soon after I started blogging, I started using a blog editor to power up my blogging (and prevent the “aiiigghhh I lost my connection and my post!!!!” which was very common at conferences, still is actually). In those days I was using Qumana for the most part, which makes sense since I was a part of the company and helping guide the growth of the app.

For its time, Qumana was a fantastic blogging app. It was almost perfect (I was always pushing for more and better refinement), but Qumana has long dropped from my toolkit as it hasn’t really been updated in a long time. After Qumana, I used Windows Live Writer. Again, almost perfect and probably one of the few apps I miss since switching to a Mac.

Right now my app of choice is Blogo and it’s good enough, but maybe not as great as I’d like. I have ecto, and while it’s good, it lacks a few refinements and doesn’t seem to have any active development going on, which always concerns me when choosing (and paying for) an app. Yesterday I bought the MacHeist nano bundle and it comes with MacJournal, which has a post to blog function. All of which has made me wonder if there is a perfect (Mac) blog editor, and if there is does anyone care?

What got me thinking about this is Paisano’s post on WebWorkerDaily about the “death of blogging” and the iPad as its potential savior (is there anything that the iPad isn’t going to save?):

What’s the Problem?
I think part of the problem with blogs is that they are too static and dull. We need to infuse new life into blogs and make them more dynamic. Just as Flash added a freshness to web sites when it first appeared on the scene, we need to do something that will change the game for blogging.
The other part of the problem involves the incredible shrinking attention span of readers/viewers. Hollywood learned long again that motion pictures need to reach out and grab the audience right away within the first 10 minutes or else its opening weekend will be its last. That’s why most movies look and feel like music videos these days. Quick cut editing and special effects reign supreme. Even the publishing industry has taken its queue from the movie industry and insist that its authors write tighter and more exciting stories.
link: The Future of Blogging – WebWorkerDaily

The key here is the writing part of the blogging problem. I have now three apps for writing and note taking. Between Scrivener, where I do most of my book writing and a lot of other writing as well, Yojimbo, where I gather a lot of the links and such researching for books, etc., and MacJournal, which I haven’t really tried yet, I have a lot of potential blogging firepower, but little practical connections.

I can easily gather a ton of stuff in Yojimbo (I love it’s drop-tab area), but I can’t pull it together and publish from there (easily). I can write my brains out in Scrivener (which I do), and I can pull in a lot of stuff into it, but not as easily as Yojimbo, but I can’t publish directly to any of my blogs. The best I’ve been able to do is write it and copy and paste. I still have to add links and images to finish off the posts. MacJournal … well it might be able to post to my blog (I haven’t tried yet), but the whole collecting of stuff part is lacking.

Then comes the critical question—does anyone really care?

I can’t remember the last time I saw someone using an editor (someone who I hadn’t shown the benefits of blog editors, btw) to post to their blog. Everyone just logs into their blog and posts directly. What if you can’t get online? Oh well. I guess it will have to wait.

See, I think that the how people post influences what they will post and the quality of the end result as well. Look at the default post area in WordPress 2.9.2:

That is not a lot of area to post in. It is confined and cramped. Yes, I know that you can make the post area bigger, but we’re talking defaults here (and most people never change the default settings). Don’t you think that small area leads to shorter posts? Here is the default posting area of Blogo (and this very post!):

Huge difference, eh? Lots of room. Space to see ideas develop. I think one of the ways we can all improve blogging is working with better tools to improve our writing.

Now, I just wish I could find it.

It’s well worth noting that on of the early versions of Qumana was built on a semantic note-taking principle and you could easy mix and match different things you dropped into to make a post (or other documents as well).

What I’d really like is the writing interface of Scrivener coupled with the drag and drop into a notes area (with tags) like Yojimbo and being able to post as easily as Blogo. Anyone?

little verify code for a beta site:

EAVB_CFKCXLHDBL

Wow times have changed. Once the world’s third largest blog network, b5media is certainly on a deathwatch now with today’s shuttering of the entire Entertainment Channel to launch Crushable.com—B5media To Launch New Celebrity Site Wednesday, Bathed In Fired Blogger Blood, Mass Firings At b5media: Entire Entertainment Network Shut, The end of b5media—and it isn’t the concentration of bloggers into a super channel that is the problem, it’s that b5 has lost vision and credibility in social media.

I worked at b5 as a blogger, channel editor, and then the training manager. I loved (most) of my time working at b5 and the one thing I could always count on was Jeremy shooting straight and telling people what he could when he could. Today I’ve checked the b5 site several times for some comment, anything, on a very public blogger bloodletting, there’s nothing there. The last news post: October 9, 2009 announcing the new CEO. The last blog post July 16, 2009! The fact that the woman who was critical to building the b5 entertainment channel Arieanna Schweber had no warning, no information, not even an idea if she still had a job, is just mind boggling.

The key people at b5 always knew what was coming ahead of time. Even by just a little, they knew. This is a sign that a company has lost heart and lost vision.

Now I’m afraid that b5media has just put the nail in the coffin of their own relevance within the blogosphere and social media. Not long ago working at b5 media meant that you knew your shit. From the developers to the bloggers, the people who were there were some of the people who helped shape not only b5, but social media over all. People who not only wrote about blogging, but helped to build the platform (WordPress) as well.

Now? Not so much.

Today b5media isn’t on the forefront, it’s a backwater. The saddest part is that it didn’t need to be. You see that I think that the plan to consolidate the individual channel blogs into super topic blogs was and is a smart one. The wheels were in motion to do this when I was still there in June 2008. It was smart then, but now b5 has lost momentum. I don’t think about b5 when I think about cutting edge commentary or content. I follow a lot of blogs and even more sources on Twitter and very rarely does a post from a b5 site ping up on the radar.

Yes, the drop in ad revenue hurt badly. Yes, there were structural issues that needed to be fixed. However, look at sites like GigaOm and ReadWriteWeb, niche players who tapped into the talent they had to launch subscription services. There was more than enough talent at b5 to do that not long ago.

Now? Not so much.

It’s really sad to see bungled communication that has now cast a pall over what might have been a great entertainment site. It’s a bungle that even if it happened during Jeremy’s watch, he would have owned up to it and talked about it. Even just to say sorry.

I think that it’s only a matter of time before b5media starts to fire sale it’s online assets and fades away. And I don’t think that time is very long from now.

To really understand this post you need to understand a few things about me:

• I pour over my webstats to learn more about who my readers are, what they read, and how they find me.
• I love discussing the things I write about. That’s why I’ve written about them in the first place.
• After blogging for about six years now, I’ve watched social media grow and evolve a lot, especially in how readers interact with writers.

Since I pour over my stats on a near-daily basis, especially when I see a traffic spike, I have a good idea of how people wind up on my blog. More than half the time it’s from search and lately a good chunk of that traffic (about 15% of visits) is for my My 45 must have WordPress plugins post. This is awesome, since while my yam fries recipe is great, it isn’t what my blog is about in the greater scheme of things. The rest of folks come through links of some sort, most of those via Twitter. Nothing to complain about there. I think it’s great that people come to read what I’ve written.

Okay, a few more people clicking on ads would be great, but, I can’t have everything.

I’ve noticed something really interesting. It hit me over the weekend and all came together in the last day or so—there aren’t as many links from other bloggers anymore. I do get a few via Zemata—makes me wonder if I added the plugin would it add links for me even if I post remotely—but that’s about it. A link here and there.

Then there are comments.

I like comments because I get to continue and extend the conversation. Oh sure I know comments are a hit and miss thing. I tell new bloggers that sometimes you get tons of comments on posts that you’d never figure and ones that you’d think would ignite a firestorm, nothing. So I’m not going to be whining that no one leaves me any comments, that isn’t the point.

What I’ve noticed, is that “discussion” is measured in a currency of tweets and retweets, not links or comments. A quick (very quick, so not terribly scientific) scan of FriendFeed makes me think that’s becoming a ghost-town as well. Not long ago many bloggers, myself included, were talking about how we couldn’t keep up with the fragmented commentary that was going on around the web. Now I wonder if we’re having any commentary at all.

Sure the RT economy is great. I retweet posts I like all the time, just like I share them through Fever as well, and that is supposed to mean “This is interesting, maybe you’ll like it too.” but I’m not leaving many comments anymore either.

Huh.

I know that lots of blogs get lots of comments on some posts. Often so many comments that I don’t know if I want to dive into that pool. Which becomes a circular argument. We don’t comment when there are lots of comments because often there is no way to manage that discussion. Maybe we don’t comment for a similar reason—that coming back for the discussion is more effort than it’s worth.

And I don’t have any answers (sorry).

I would love to know what you think about a post. I would love to extend, expand, and elaborate on the topic. I also don’t want the discussion to become so unwieldy that readers feel they can’t comment.

Maybe if there were a way to have a Twitter hashtag for each post, automatically generated, that if you tweet with that hashtag that tweet becomes part of the post. Hmm, that sounds like an idea. Oh HootSuite, maybe that could be a little pet project? Dave? Maybe Melanie and PostRank are well equipped to pull it off.

Well I’ll just have to see what comes through in the comments, won’t I?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Death of the Blog Comment? (markevanstech.com)

If you’ve watched even one Superbowl, Superbowl pre-game show or halftime show, heck even any NFL game during the year, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about here. Football commentators, and the ones for the Superbowl especially, are almost like no other group of folks in the world, well except for bloggers.

If you get to the point where you think you know enough to stop learning, then you’re too stupid to know that you’re finished. That might be crass, but over the past year with a book and a half under my belt I’ve figured out that I have a ton left to learn in this world.

Every time I thought, “Yeah I have a good handle on this, but I’m just going to double-check something…” found out that I didn’t have a good handle on it and I learned far more than I knew just minutes before. Today is no different.

I’m working on the chapter on tuning WordPress for SEO. As most of your know by now, WordPress is pretty darn well tuned for SEO to begin with, so a lot of what we do is bringing the site from 90% there to 100%. Okay, I’m going along, confident in what I know, then I get to the section on Google Webmaster Tools. Whenever I hit a section like that I always go to the site to double check things. Sites update and add features all the time, so I just want to be sure there isn’t something I’ve missed.

If you’ve ever used Google’s Webmaster Tools, you know that you can easily become immersed in the wealth of data there. As I was going through and saw errors I realized that I wasn’t getting the automatic meta descriptions I once was.

Hmm.

Okay so, I wanted to change that. So I wandered to DIYThemes to check out the Thesis forum.

So, the meta descriptions aren’t generated automatically. Maybe I could find a way to do that. But as I read more I realized that putting in a custom meta description would really be better.

There was the problem. As all of you know I prefer to post to my blogs with an offline blogging client or editor. I’ve been doing it this way for years and I’m not planning on changing anytime soon. As far as I read, Thesis descriptions and keywords were set through the WordPress post editor.

I didn’t really want to write, post, then edit and update. I’m not a big fan of workflows like that. I suspected, however that when putting the info into the areas that Thesis provided that I was really just using custom fields.

After a quick test, yep I was right. The description is in thesis_description and keywords in thesis_keywords. Why was this cool and important?

Because Blogo, my editor of choice, let’s me set custom fields within the editor.

In this whole process I learned that Google will use the meta description in the output of search results (even if they don’t carry search weight), Thesis doesn’t generate the descriptions automatically, keywords are set automatically using tags, and I can tune my posts for search engines even more finely if I use custom fields.

That is a lot for answering one question.

Man I wonder what I’ll learn about WordPress tomorrow…

I’ve been lukewarm on the whole Olympics thing for a while. I’m not a huge fan of large crowds or sports, so the idea of the whole world descending on my fair city wasn’t very appealing. Then in the fall, while I was finishing Create Your Own Blog, I took on writing Using WordPress, which I would need to finish in early March (ssshhh, yes I know it’s a month away) so I had an even better reason to stay in my home-office hidey hole for the duration of the Games.

Then Dave Olson came to talk to my BCIT class last night.

Dammit Dave, you keep frigging inspiring me to do better, write better, chronicle better. I was at the original True North Media House meetings, but felt I had to stay at arms length from it. I was working with folks trying to get social media work with VANOC and I didn’t think it wise to jeopardize that. Like many things in life, hindsight is 20/20 and I was wrong. I should have stayed involved. Not that I had a lot of time to spare to help, but I could have a least helped a little.

That was then, this is now and I’ve added my name to the True North Media House list, working on my media badge and excited to do something during the games. Will I wander the streets in the evening? Maybe. Maybe I’ll just wander down to Holy Rosary where Vancouver Opera will be rehearsing Nixon in China so I can walk back with Sheila and other members of the Opera Chorus. I think I might also just park myself at various coffee places I like and people watch. I like to write with people around, so that should be fun.

Oh and not only did Dave inspire me, I think better than half of the students in the class are newly inspired to do something during the Games. Leaving class, my students and I were talking about photowalks and just being a part of the whole amazing time.

Yeah, just another standard, run-of-the-mill talk by Dave. Inspire 30 people to do more, write more, contribute more. Nothing much.

Thank you Dave.

Getting fired for blogging doesn’t get as much attention as it did in 2004-2005. Back then, the media was a buzz about people getting fired because they were blogging, when, in truth, very few people were actually fired for blogging. Oh yes, some people were fired for blogging, that much is true. I’m sure many of the cases had little to do with the blogging parts as it did with something else going on. However the “fired for blogging” thing did do one good thing, it forced companies to realize that people were blogging and set up blogging policies.

I cover blogging policies in Create Your Own Blog, from Sun’s massive one to the “unofficial blogging policy” from Microsoft: don’t be stupid. Blogging is different than almost anything else you do in your spare time because it is public. If you blog about your boss being a doofus, well that blog better either be private or you’re blogging anonymously because there’s a good chance you’ll eventually get turfed for stuff like that. No, calling your boss a doofus isn’t illegal, it’s just not too smart. You don’t think it won’t get back to him or her? Think again. Oh and the anonymous blog thing? Yeah that doesn’t usually last too long. Most anonymous bloggers who gain any kind of following are eventually revealed (or reveal themselves before being outed by others).

Blogging and your job treads into the territory of other social media and employment. Facebook is now the latest target in the “get you fired” or “keep you from being hired” discussion, and honestly the issues haven’t changed. If you publish something online not only is it there forever, there is no guarantee that something to mark or think is private will stay that way. Just as blogging that your boss is a doofus isn’t smart, tweeting or updating your Facebook status that you’re goofing off when you really called in sick isn’t going to do you any favors. It will get around. Trust me. Maybe not that time or the next time, but it will sometime and you’ll be hooped.

This is why I’ve always liked Microsoft’s blogging policy: Don’t be stupid. It’s simple and to the point. Yeah I know it’s subjective, but just consider what you’re doing as if on of your friends told you they were going to it or did it. If you cringe and think “Oooh that was stupid…” Well, then you have your answer.

So, no, neither blogging, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media tool gets you fired, often you do it to yourself by being stupid.

Don’t be stupid.

When I’m helping people first start blogging, one of the first objections (fears, concerns) is that no one will be interested in what they have to say. In nearly six years of blogging I have yet to find someone start a blog that didn’t have some kind of audience.

Think about it this way, no matter what your topic, issue, hobby, whatever is there has got to be at least one other person (and most likely more) in the world who shares your feelings/experience/passion. The world is a huge place and we all share so many common experiences that coupled with the global reach of the Internet you are sure to find an audience.

The fact of the matter is that if you write about what you love, from the heart, and with passion readers will connect with you and the post. People like to connect. People like stories and understanding others just a little bit more. There are so many amazing stories out there yet still to be told and I hope and over time, more and more people will contribute their stories to the world-wide library of humanity: The Internet.

Feeling a little anxious about posting something to the world is completely understandable. I still feel that why when I’m writing a post on the edges of (or outside of) my comfort zone. I worry that people will stop reading. I worry that what I write will go over like a lead balloon and there will be just the sound of virtual crickets chirping after I hit “Publish”. If you’re starting a new blog, don’t worry, for the first while you’re writing for yourself. People won’t likely find your blog unless you link to it from Facebook, Twitter, or just plain tell people about it. It’s not that people won’t ever come it’s that they don’t come right away. Consider this your safe time to write and get your feet under you.

Relax. Just write and post and find your voice. People will come, don’t worry.

You might also try using Google Blog Search to find other blogs in your niche. Just go there and search for your hobby or interest. Let’s say you’re really into watching planes and like to know which ones are which. A quick search for plane spotting came up with some great results. Adding your local airport code (for me it’s YVR) gives you local results. Now not only do you have more blogs to read, but you also have a potential audience. Read their blogs, leave comments, link to their posts from yours.

Before you know it not only will people be wanting to read what you’re posting, they’ll be begging you to post more!

Remember, blogging is supposed to be fun and about your passions. The rest will just work itself out.

This morning I had the wonderful privilege to be on Donna Maria’s awesome Indie Business Radio show and when we got to talking about podcasting I said that it was about time I wrote an updated Podcasting 101 post and thus…

I started podcasting about a year after I started blogging. My “Walk About Podcasts” were pretty good, considering I didn’t edit and I had no clue about recording or cleaning up audio files, but hey that was then…

Today I use a Blue Snowball USB-microphone with Apple’s GarageBand (and I actually understand a little about audio engineering now) to record my podcasts and some of my voice-over work for screencasts. To get started podcasting you don’t need fancy software or equipment, you just need a microphone and (if you don’t have a Mac with GarageBand) Audacity to record and export to MP3. Yep, pretty much that simple for starters.

Let’s talk mics first. If you have a laptop with a webcam built-in, chances are you have a microphone built-in as well. Now, the onboard mic is fine to start with, but the recording quality isn’t the greatest. It’s not your fault, the onboard mics are designed to catch sound in a pretty wide cone around the front of your laptop, so there can be a lot of background noise. That and you aren’t going to be sitting terribly close to the mic, well you might be okay with the results for a short bit. To get started, I’d suggest a basic headset mic. I would choose a USB version over a one with the plugin jacks, but there is little difference between the quality. Note: Mac users, pick USB..the audio in line on most Macs doesn’t work the way you’d expect (it requires power I’m told). Expect to pay about $20-30 for a decent headset.

Yes you can get a mic that sits on your table, but unless you’re used to working with mics, you might find it hard to get consistent recordings. Using a headset mic the mic part is going to be close to your mouth all the time (it should be about two-fingers width away from your mouth). Part of the secret to good recordings is keeping the mic close and speaking clearly. That and relaxing and a glass of water, but I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s switch gears to software…

I’ve used an arsenal of tools over the years to record podcasts, but I really like GarageBand for the number of great, professional tweaks I can use. Oh, right, 101… Okay when you start up GarageBand pick the Podcast option, create the file and click the vocal track you want. When you’re ready, click record.

Did you do your mic check? Make sure that you’re getting sound in from the right source.

Let’s switch gears to Audacity.

It works essentially the same way as GarageBand, click the Record button and a new track will be created. Don’t forget that mic check…

Once you have recorded your first podcast (try for less than 5 minutes to start), you’re going to need to export it to an MP3 file. For Audacity, this is under the File menu and choose Export. Pick MP3 from the list. For GarageBand it’s under the Share menu and choose Export Podcast to Disk.

(Note for Audacity you need to follow these directions for getting the MP3 LAME encoder)

Now that you have this MP3 file on disk, you’re going to need to upload it somewhere so other people can listen to it. Sorry, YouTube is for video only. The only free podcasting service that I know of is PodBean, now if you already have a website you can upload the file there (this is what I do and have done for years). Listening?

If you’re using most blogging platforms you can link to the file just like any other file, now if you are on WordPress you can use the PowerPress plugin from Blubrry which will do all the hard work for you and help you get your feed ready for iTunes. But that’s for another post.

Yes, condensing a Podcasting lesson into one post is rather a lot, but here’s a video that might help:

I couldn’t cover everything in this post, so if you want more you can always buy my book …

The music in the podcast is Mighty Mullane from my friend Derek Miller

I’m going to tell you something that us “experts” don’t want you to know. Ready?

Blogging is dead.

Wha? Blogging is dead? Didn’t you just write a book on creating your own blog? Yeah I did, but let’s get this straight—blogging is writing and a blog is just a website that makes it really easy to do that. When I took on writing the book that would become Create Your Own Blog, I have to admit I was a little reluctant at first. Not because I didn’t think I could do it (I wasn’t smart enough to be worried about that), but because I think getting stuck on the idea of blogs and blogging as what changed things in the last five years sells us all short.

Here’s what made blogs great:

• We wrote like we meant it
• We linked to lots of other people and sources
• We commented
• We read what each other wrote
• We used tools (aka blog engines) that made all of this easily.

And none of that has changed since then. I think we’ve only gotten better at it, in fact. The fact of the matter is that little of what we’ve been doing needs to be tied to a word.

Humans like to define things. People wanted to find a ways to differentiate what became to be called “blogging” from the myriad (plethora?) of websites that cropped up like mushrooms between 1995 and the early 2000s. That was fine. Then when “blogging” took off, a blog took on some kind of mystical quality that if you had one all your marketing problems would be over. With a blog, anything was possible. Yeah well like a young lady I know once said:

“Come on, don’t you know a blog is just a website…”

And that is 100% true. What people forget is that when more and more people started to use blogging tools something more interesting was happening. Suddenly writing something and putting it onto a website didn’t require much more than knowing how to use HotMail. Suddenly you could write as much as you wanted, post, and then people freakin read the stuff. Yeah we read a lot of stuff back then. RSS readers were essential to the digerati, so we read a lot.

Then we left comments.

Then we wrote our own posts and linked to other posts.

This is how blogging seemed to have superpowers. This is how a single post could start a tempest in a tea cup or bring down a presidential candidate. We could write and distribute information as fast as we could type (and some of us type really freakin’ fast).

Today smart companies use blog engines to power their “regular” websites because they figured out that a WordPress-powered website was easier to update and maintain than one made up of lots of individual pages. Is that a blog or just smart publishing?

Don’t worry if people and pundits tell you that blogging is dead.

Don’t worry if people think you’re yesterday’s news launching your new WordPress blog/site.

Don’t worry because the word “blogging” might have lost its allure, because “writing and sharing good stuff” never does.

Just start.

Just write.

Just create “an interactive, dynamic, database-drive website where publishing is really easy.”

Yeah, just blog.

It’s been almost six years since I started blogging. Not nearly as long as some of my friends, but long enough to have a few things that I know I’d do differently. With the book out and review coming in, like this review from the Vancouver Sun, I’ve had a little time to think about how and why I started blogging.

It’s not hype or urban legend, I did start my first blog on a whim. It was actually my second blog, I deleted the first one within days of creating it, but I still think of it has when I really started blogging. I started on Blogger; it was pretty much the safe bet back then for a free blog. Which brings me to the first and second “if I started today…” today I would start on WordPress.com or use a one-click install on my host (since I had web hosting even then) and I wouldn’t have picked “A View from the Isle” as the name of the blog. Yeah View from the Isle seemed like a good idea at the time. I was living on an island, and I continued to live on an island until mid-2008, but now it’s a little hard to explain.

Using WordPress is obvious, back then Blogger was pretty cutting edge. I hadn’t heard of Typepad yet, and it would be a few months until I switched to Blogware. I started to figure out that Blogger wasn’t all that when I couldn’t use those new-fangled “trackbacks” (they were new back in 2004), but hey starting out free is a smart idea when you’re testing the waters. WordPress.com makes starting a blog, then moving it later to your own domain a pretty easy affair. Blogger’s FTP-based solution for having your own URL was odd to say the least. And speaking of moving to your own domain…

I wouldn’t have used larixconsulting.com (my original domain), but the domain I have now trishussey.com. Finding a good, clever, and even cheeky domain name is often a matter of sheer luck. Trying to spell larixconsulting.com is hard enough, okay spelling my own name to people is annoying too, so keeping your domain simple should be high on your priority list.

What about the rest of the stuff? Would I have written the same way? Would I have “gone pro”? Yeah, I would have. It’s funny the only parts I’d really want to change are the boring structural pieces, not the stuff that really counts—the writing.

I’ve managed to deal with moving from Blogger to Blogware (and breaking all my links in the process) and Blogware to WordPress (and again breaking all my links in the process) without doing too much damage. Sure my blog has had lulls. Yeah, I’ve gone through periods of time when I was blogging so many different places that “what’s your blog” wasn’t an easy question to answer (might have done that differently). Through it all there is one thing that has been constant: writing with passion.

You want the moral to this story is? Don’t worry about how you start. Don’t worry which platform you pick or URL you buy (you should buy a URL pretty fast, IMHO). Just start and write. No one is going to laugh at you. No one is going to judge your blog as being less than some other person’s. If you write with passion. If you write about what you want to write about. If you just write what you feel. It’s going to be a great blog.

I promise.

When was the last time you sat down and picked about the details of a problem to solve it? How often do we get caught at “30,000 foot level” when trying to grasp something or read the patterns of news or sentiment? I’d say often. When I was a kid I was often accused by teachers that I “missed the forest for the trees”, which was and is still true. However consider this, if you don’t look at the trees that make up a forest, and look at them closely, you might miss the one that is carrying a pathogen that could wipe out the whole forest.

This exchange between Chris Brogan and Doriano Carta (and the rest of the post), gives context and words to the idea of going from a wide angle look at a problem to a macro look:

“@chrisbrogan I noticed the Hemmingway effect spreading amongst bloggers. Less is more is the credo for the new Macro-blogging age.” I followed up with this tweet which Chris retweeted: “By Macro-blogging, I mean zooming in on particular details as in photos instead of using the usual wide angle lens trying to cover too much” Someone said they didn’t understand what I meant, saying Macro means bigger. My response was this: ”Large in the sense of zooming in closer, not larger as in volume or quantity. More Focus, less words”

link: Doriano Carta » Blog Archive » Macro-Blogging in a Microwave Society

Paisano continues…

The good news is that we have the freedom to choose the tools and approach we want to use. It’s up to each one of us to choose the right lens (pen) for the job at hand. Would the subject be better served with the wide lens, the macro lens or something in between? The ultimate goal should be to capture its essence and truth as clearly and as effectively as possible.

When I start my day I have email, Twitter, Fever and now LazyFeed open to scan what has come in overnight. At this point I’m zoomed out. I’m trying to catch the big topics (Fever can do this for me with one click):

I can see what’s going on, what’s trending, what to watch for. Then I zoom in. Some idea, trend, or technology catches my eye (or mind, as I’m reading Blink now I’m trying to be more aware of what draws me first) and I dive for it. We all do that. Some are better than others, and those “others” are the ones who often come up with the brilliant ideas that stun us all.

I think while RSS helped us gather the big picture, it’s Twitter (ironically micro-blogging) that has helped us catch more details. When I read feeds or scan my LazyFeed page…

it’s the big picture. Sure I see details there, but I sometimes don’t act on them until I see more information on Twitter or a post rises to the top to fill in the details that I’m looking for. Something that will provide context.

Macro-blogging is the perfect compliment to our infocentric world. We have tons of info spinning around us, but we take a moment to obsess (in a positive way) over a detail.

At least that’s the theory.

But as I dissect it further…

Yeah, I’m a well known Facebook curmudgeon and haven’t had ads here on the site for years now, but yesterday that changed.

Sigh.

I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong, or at least when I need to wise up to reality. I know Facebook is huge and lots of people make that the centre of their online universe. I’m just not one of those people. Yes, I’m on Facebook and have a respectable number of Facebook friends, but Facebook just doesn’t provide much for me that I can’t get elsewhere.

Except for events.

And fan pages.

Crap.

I begrudgingly admit that, yeah not using Facebook to spread the word about something even as simple as a birthday party is pretty foolish. So by the same token, I have to admit that having a Facebook fan page for Create Your Own Blog is a good idea for promoting the book.

And so, I put together a simple fan page yesterday (with help from Jesse Stay’s tutorial on Techipedia) that I’ll be working on expanding over the next little while.

I’m very happy to already have a number of fans (after I figured out that I didn’t really invite people in the first place—oops), which I take to be a good sign that people are at least willing to glance at the book. Now to move people from glancing to buying is the next step.

Yeah, need to work on that, well right after the book actually hits the shelves that is.

Anyway, that was just the first of my changes to my social media world yesterday. The second was advertising.

Yes, advertising.

To be perfectly clear I have never been against advertising on blogs, I just didn’t like fussing with it. The partly amount I was earning (next to nothing), didn’t make up for the time I felt I needed to spend cultivating the ads. I decided yesterday that enough was enough and I needed to do something to support my gadget cravings and premium coffee habit.

So I have Adsense on the the site now. And affiliate links to DIYThemes/Thesis. Even though in the last chapter of the book I point out that my site didn’t have ads (it didn’t when I wrote the chapter), I’m willing to answer tough questions about why I started (again) now.

Am I willing to have more ads here on the site? Yes I am. How I’m going to go about selling more space here I’ll talk about in a while. I want to get a solid baseline of data before I change things again.

Am I a social media sell out now? No, I don’t think so. I’m a realist/pragmatist. I know that Facebook is a powerful way to build buzz and discussion around a topic/person/book/whatever. It just is, like it or not, it just is. I would be pretty stupid to ignore Facebook and still say that I understand social media marketing. Adsense and advertising? Frankly I’ve been working hard to (re)build traffic on this site and with traffic comes the potential for advertising. Advertising means money. Money allows me to feed, clothe, and house my fiancée and I a little better.

I’d love to hear what you think of these changes I’ve made. Including, you might have missed, a new disclosure link in the footer.

Now I need more coffee…

Even though it’s been the holiday season, work on Using WordPress hasn’t slowed down only a wee bit. Several of the initial chapters are now in the loving hands of my editors and I’m proceeding full steam ahead. Since crowd sourcing works pretty darn well for getting feedback, commentary, and information, I’m looking for a bit of help with the next chapter in the book: WordPress Plugins.

Us WordPress.org/DIY install users know that there are thousands of WP plugins out there to try. Lots of plugins do the same thing and while there are some standout awesome ones, I’m sure there are some real dogs as well. I have my set of core favourite plugins (even if I don’t have them active at the moment for various reasons), but I want to know which plugins you’d add (or remove) from the list.

In the book I’ve (for the time being) grouped plugins into the following bins:

• Interface tweaks
• Comments
• Caching and optimization
• SEO
• Metrics and stats
• Multimedia
• Theme related
• Administration
• Social Media integrations
• Mobile
• Search
• Miscellaneous (you always need miscellaneous).

I know that there is overlap among the categories. A plugin for a Flickr slide show could be multimedia or social media or Akismet could be administration or comments. Regardless of how I bin them in the end, I want to have as complete a list as possible. To that end, here are my “must-haves” and “I wouldn’t mind recommending them” plugins:

1. Akismet
2. All in One SEO
3. Blubrry PowerPress
4. CommentLuv
5. Drop Caps
6. FAlbum
7. FD FeedBurner
8. Feed Footer
9. flickr RSS
10. Google XML sitemaps
11. IntenseDebate
12. Lifestream
13. Lijit search
14. Outbrain
15. Postrank
16. Reveal IDs for WP Admin
17. RSS Cloud
18. Search Everything
19. Simple Pull Quote
20. Sphere Related Content
21. Subscribe to Comments
22. Syntax Highlighter Evolved
23. Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC)
24. Theme Test Drive
25. TweetMeme Retweet
26. Tweet This
27. Ultimate Google Analytics
28. W3 Total Cache
29. WP Super Cache
30. Wibiya
31. Woopra
32. WordPress.com Stats
33. WordPress Database Backup
34. WordPress exploit scanner
35. WordPress mobile edition
36. WordTwit
37. WP-Cumulus
38. WP-DBManager
39. WP-PageNavi
40. WP-Polls
41. WP Smush.it
42. WPTouch
43. Registered Users Only
44. Private Files
45. WP-ecommerce

No, I don’t have all of these active (only 21 of them in fact) nor have I listed all 66 plugins I have loaded on my blog, but like I said these are ones I don’t have a problem recommending or using myself.

Now it’s your turn. Are there plugins that should and shouldn’t be on the list? I can’t include every plugin under the Sun, but I would like to make sure who ever reads the book will have a solid list to start with and work from.

Okay, let’er rip!

Update: Thanks to @leonardipaolo for suggesting/prodding me to include links to all the plugins.

Update 2: Speaking of plugins, I was trying one today to check for bad links and while it worked (I think) it also brought this blog to a crawl. Disabled the plugin and everything is back to normal. So, word to the wise, overloading with plugins is just as bad as overloading your sidebars with widgets—it very likely will negatively affect your blog’s performance.